Okay,

being a Smooth Stepper user, the reason that I went that route is noise issues on the parallel port cards that I tried with the computer that I use for the shop. Personally, having used more then a few different CAD and CAM software packages I have to say horses for courses and be very careful before laying out your money (I wish I had not bought about £650 of software that I do not even use these days). A Smooth Stepper is just plain faster then current PP set ups. Having said that, Mach4 maybe changing the playing field there and there are some interesting developments in 64 bit computing using parallel ports so will be interesting to see.

I use ViaCAD 2D/3D v8 and ViaCAD Pro v8 for almost all my CAD work as it is very cost effective and for myself smoother then sketch up and produces .stl files which so many CAM program prefer (it also has a rather wide range of import and export available). Next is CAM and for that I go to CamBam, PhotoVcarve, and on the rare occasion BobCAD V21. I plan on upgrading the CAM options in the near future for ease of use but will be seeing on that. I use Mach 3 with Gerry's screen as once it is set (I have three set ups so far for cutting profiles in Mach3 to help deal with different materials). That does pretty much all I need. I have looked at some very high end stuff and the price just does not do it for me, not when I can get what needs done for much less money. There is high end worth paying for, Aspire and VcarvePro come to mind and a few other ones.

Doing CNC properly is work. A good bit of it and a lot of learning. I know a huge amount more then I did 4 yrs ago and I still have a whole lot more to learn. I tend to be more for the practical and what gets the job done to the best ROI more then what is new and flashy. After all is not the reason for having the machine the ability to earn income from project that the machine can do better or that can only be done effectively with the machine?

Michael